1/12/2012

The new £59,950 Msaerati Coupé GT has a much more focused ambition than the outgoing 3200 GT, which wasn’t an especially polished product.
It wants to be an honest continent crosser in the traditional Gran Turismo sense, without sacrificing too much of the excitement associated with the world’s best-sounding car name. It also needs to justify Ferrari’s substantial financial commitment in resurrecting the Maserati brand, and to prove, at last, that you can look further afield than Zuffenhausen if there’s a £70k coupé on your shopping list.

Maserati 4200 GT Design

Maserati 4200 GT (1)

Apart from the slightly raised bonnet line, the sad demise of the narrow LED rear-light strip, and a heavenly set of new 18in alloys, the new car looks little different.
Out goes the turbocharged V8 to be replaced with a unit of identical configuration but larger capacity and natural aspiration. Closely related to the V8 that powers the 360 Modena, the new 4244cc unit produces a sizeable 385bhp at 7000rpm and 333lb ft of torque at just 3300rpm.

Maserati 4200 GT (2)

Space constraints and the quest for perfect weight distribution have pushed the gearbox to the rear. The transmission itself is an all-new six-speeder offering the choice of manual or hydraulically actuated Cambiocorsa operation. Given the longer and less frenetic set of legs Maserati has given this car, it seems odd that a conventional automatic ’box isn’t also available.
Comprehensive modifications to the chassis include new spring and damper rates and the steering rack, arguably the 3200 GT’s weakest ingredient, has also been thoroughly revised to ensure a more linear response across the locks.

Maserati 4200 GT On The Road

Maserati 4200 GT (3)

You can forget the numbers, ignore the technical data and just drink in what must be one of the finest engines currently in production.
This is a staggeringly fast car, one that will blast to 60mph in 4.9sec and 100mph in a scant 11.3sec. It needs every last ounce of that straight-line speed because the competition at this level is startlingly brisk: today’s basic Carrera will now hit the magic ton in just 10.1sec.
And it’s flexible; so happy is it to chug along at crank speeds barely above idle that you always find yourself running in one, even two gears higher than you might in a 911. But the shift is too obstructive and the clutch action too abrupt. There’s plenty of driveline shunt, too.

Maserati 4200 GT (4)

On its stiffest setting, the Skyhook adaptive damping reawakens all that was wrong with Maseratis of yesteryear, but to switch it off is to be released from poor-ride purgatory. Suddenly wheel travel seems to increase and rather than skip over bumps the car soaks them up and makes a pretty good fist of isolating the cabin.
There’s a price to pay in roll stiffness and outright body control, but the sacrifice is minute in real terms because the Coupé feels so much better planted that it actually gives you the confidence to carry much more speed. The steering is a happy compromise between feedback, clipping-point accuracy and motorway sneeze-factor imperviousness.
It’s a car of singular character, the Coupé. Not quite the precise B-road tool a 911 is, but still capable of raising pulses in all the right ways. But the real result is its cruising ability.

Maserati 4200 GT Living

Maserati 4200 GT (5)

Maserati 4200 GT (6)

Even after allowing for its fantastic new engine, perhaps the most extraordinary thing about this car is, and always has been, it’s ability to carry four adults in reasonable comfort. If only the boot was capable of swallowing four people’s luggage.
The best news is that the driving position has been improved by dropping the seat 25mm, but the posture remains old-school Italian with the wheel set too far away, Poorly placed pedals don’t help, either: learn to heel ’n’ toe in this car and you’ll manage it in anything.
Maserati isn’t especially generous on the standard equipment front. Our car came with superb xenon lights, but then so they should be for £920 and seeing both cruise control (£325) and sat-nav (£1640) on the options list is rather too Scrooge-like for our taste. But interior build quality is out of the top drawer, so at least the money is being spent where it matters.
Likes a drink does the Maser: we struggled to coax much more than 300 miles at a time from the 88-litre tank.

Maserati 4200 GT Verdict

Maserati 4200 GT (7)

There are, as there always will be with cars of irrepressible character, any number of objective reasons to strike the Coupé off your shopping list. The first, and most damning, is the spiteful manual gearchange, which doesn’t sit harmoniously in such an otherwise improved car. And it is a dramatic improvement over the outgoing model, a package with real cohesion that offers something currently missing in the market: a genuine alternative to the perennial Porsche. It has the pace, ride comfort and cabin space to slip into the GT role perfectly, and do so with all the charisma you’d expect of a Maserati.